There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Programming Aids

Performance Difficulty:

moderate

Descriptive Terms:

contemplative

anti-war

Allow Excerpts:

Composition is a single movement

Composer’s Notes:

“There will come soft rains” is from one of Teasdale's last collections of poems, Flame and Shadow. In this work, Teasdale lamented her country’s entry into World War I, and her lyric poetry became tinged with foreboding and resignation. This music setting attempts to bring the contemplate nature of this poem to the foreground. It has frequent instances of 8-part harmony and is basically tonal.